Artifex Hand CF Font Field Guide

Best Practices

Artifex Hand CF is built for use at small to medium sizes, in print and digital environments. Its Book weight is designed for use in longform text, articles, books, footnotes, and documents, while the thicker weights can double as headlines, subheadlines, and captions. Artifex Hand includes a wide range of language support, including extended Latin, Cyrillic, Greek, and the International Phonetic Alphabet. Also supported are romanization options for Arabic, Pinyin, and Sanskrit, making Artifex Hand an excellent choice for research papers, international reports, and scientific writing.

Family

Eight weights of roman designs, each with a complementary italic, for a total of 16 styles.

Font Facts

• Artifex Hand CF has a sister typeface, Artifex CF, an oldstyle serifed font family built on the same foundation and with the same focus on legibility.
• The name “Artifex” is Latin for artist or craftsperson, chosen to evoke a sense of history and refinement. The “Hand” in the name is a reference to calligraphy and hand lettering, and helps distinguish it from the original Artifex CF typeface.

Roots

Artifex Hand CF is an original design by Connary Fagen created in 2018. The project’s goal was to carry over the elegance and ease-of-use of the original Artifex CF to a sans-serif design that would excel as a text face. Artifex’s serifs were filed down to graceful, subtle flares that lend a humanist touch. Updates and enhancements were released in 2019, 2021 and 2022, greatly expanding language support.

Legibility

Artifex Hand CF was designed for text use, and reads well at small to medium sizes. A low contrast design built with a tall x-height keeps counters open and shapes distinct, even in less than ideal conditions.

Download a pdf version of the Artifex Hand CF Font Field Guide and view the Artifex Hand CF font family.